Milk and honey, Rhonda and Pammy the house cows

The first few days of the camp we stayed at the outstation, where we learnt a bit about Ian and Paola and Karl’s low impact alternative to the usual pastoral operation here in the desert uplands. We saw the stark contrast on the boundary fence-lines; Bimblebox is rich in a diversity of plants and animals, whilst the neighbouring lands appear as impoverished monocultures of introduced buffel grass, a weed in natural ecosystems. After landclearing, the eucalypts regenerate, covering paddocks in a blanket of protective growth that graziers call “woody weeds”. The next line of attack is the so-called blade ploughing, which cuts the lignotubers of the eucalypts below the ground. We followed Sonja as she hand-milked two of the cows for the artists camp, and using a hydrophone we listen in on the intimate sounds of the cow Rhonda’s complex digestive system. The hydrophone is a contact microphone, useful for listening underwater, and on the body it is like a stethoscope, revealing the sounds of heartbeat and digestion. Fluid movements within bodies and landscapes indicate health or disease. Click the play button to listen.